disrupting myself, or the jump from Product Marketing to Product Management

Day 150: “Important” is a fleeting word

Purging the backlog is pretty amusing. It’s also a stark reminder that humans are rather poor at predicting what has lasting importance.

Many things fell off the chopping block. There were of course, the duplicates and “solved by other” tickets. But in the pile of closed stories (I affectionately call it a graveyard), a few red arrows stood out.

JIRA marks major priorities with a red, upward-facing arrow. These were stories once considered by requestors (including Product Managers) to be of high priority and importance.

In some instances, the situations changed and the features were no longer relevant. In others though, time brought the death knell. As more important (subjectively speaking) features were developed, these got pushed a sprint, and then another, and… until the requestor moved on (having learnt more about what was truly important), or simply forgot the relevance.

Ah, we humans.

I jumped from Product Marketing to Product Management at Zalora recently. These posts represent a journal of my learnings and reflections – you can keep track of my journey by joining the mailing list here.